


Its Dreadful Imposition

by thegrumblingirl



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Character Death Fix, Dubious Consent, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, High Chaos (Dishonored), High Chaos Daud (Dishonored), High Chaos Jessamine Kaldwin, Jessamine was dead and now she isn't, Low Chaos Corvo Attano, but the Heart is in the Void, except none of this fixes anything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-12
Updated: 2019-01-12
Packaged: 2019-10-08 19:36:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17392403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegrumblingirl/pseuds/thegrumblingirl
Summary: When the Empress returns from the dead, Daud becomes her servant.





	Its Dreadful Imposition

**Author's Note:**

> I've carried this idea around with me for over a year, but it's spider's excellent prince!Daud AU that finally made me want to do something with it. But since I've already got so many wips running, I challenged myself to stick the entire thing into 2.000 words or less — so here you go. My Friday night, laid out before you.
> 
> Mind the tags/warnings. This story's neither happy nor happy-ending.
> 
> Title: [I See A Darkness (Johnny Cash)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWnUItw1ElU)

It all went according to plan — after the plan had nearly fallen into the Void at the last second because of _course_ Attano had returned two days early. The message Daud had received from Burrows had been frantic, and he’d had no trouble imagining that small, hateful man pacing up and down his office, muttering to himself and willing everything to be just so. Daud had sent a quick missive in return, detailing his demand for more money, if he had to live with the imposition and work around it, too; and his recommendation to let the bodyguard have the burden and the blame. Failure, in Dunwall, meant death or dishonour — and in this case: both.

Daud had clenched his fist as he’d seen the first assault fall to Attano’s quick blade and pistol, even knowing that they would be unharmed. A diversion, he would call it, to let them think the worst had passed; and then to strike when they were too sure of their survival. The Void opened and closed around him as he crossed the distance, the Tower and its grounds superbly still in that one moment that it took him. His eyes went black and the world went grey, shimmering and shifting before settling into nothingness; only to return to life when he relinquished his hold. But this moment was no rebirth, no jubilant reawakening. Life, in Daud’s experience, was simply the absence of death. And until the clock struck for those who Time had marked, the absence of evidence was hardly evidence of absence. Death was everywhere in Dunwall, in the rotten leaves in the muck and the shining eyes of the rats that had brought their doom. They chittered underfoot as he strode through the streets, and knew better than to turn their hungry gaze on him. Let them hunt, he’d say, long as it’s not us. Gristol deserved no better.

The Empress’ neck felt like a bird’s in his unforgiving grasp, the sinews and muscles straining, bulging as she struggled; but in vain. He stepped in close, and there was a hint of her perfume in the air between them. Her eyes found his and he snarled, and the next moment she gasped but made no sound. She choked on nothing, not even blood, so quick was the strike of his knife between her ribs and through her heart.

He was gone as quickly as he came.

He left behind the bodyguard and his dead eyes. It would take, Daud knew. Death always took.

*

But it was not the heel of his boot against the creaking, wooden boards of the Chamber that would turn the tide in the tussle over Dunwall’s fate. It would not be his eye that wept with silver, running over his mouth and down his chin. His would merely be the hand that held the knife.

It was no wonder how she had passed them all, too regal in her bearing and too cruel in her beauty to be mistaken for anything but a ghost. But the hand that she laid on the audiograph to stop its eager acceptance of his words, spoken with something like regret and perhaps knowing of the danger that was curling, wanting, waiting in the shadows, was real. The switch clicked and flipped and Daud reared back. She’d been silent. There were Whalers at the window and at the door, following her as if transfixed, seeing only her and knowing it was judgement that had come to them.

“You killed me,” she spoke with a veil over her rage but not her widow’s eyes. But then, Attano was not dead yet, was he? No, Burrows still kept him, wondering over his purpose and incapable to make up his mind: the noose, the blade, or poison. All three would do, but just one would be chosen to do the trick.

“And you were dead,” he replied, the world turned so cold his breath fogged up between them.

_It’s a dream_ , he thought. _One of those dreams He sends me that are supposed to mean something._

“I am become death,” she rattled, and her jaw unhinged and her mouth opened as wide as a maw and she swallowed him up with darkness.

He woke, or came to, but she was still there, sat in his chair. He was on the floor, and he rather suspected she preferred him there.

“You will do my bidding,” she told him. “You and him, perhaps. If he still can. You will find my daughter and return her to me, and me to my throne.”

“What are you?” he grated. At least once, he had to ask, even if he never received an answer.

“My heart is Void,” she said. “I am no longer for this world, but I have bought my freedom and earned it, too.” Now, she stood, and walked over to him, bending to whisper, still towering over him. “I am immortal.”

*

_You killed her,_ the Outsider said as he appeared behind him, following his gaze across the Void towards a distant, unreachable island. _And you cannot save her_. _Her heart is the Void’s now, and it will remain here until she decides she wants it back_.

“And if I decide?“ Daud growled.

_It is her bargain. Not yours to make, not yours to undo_.

“What is her purpose?“ he demanded.

_Don’t play coy_ , the god reminded him. _Or have you forgotten what lust there is in vengeance?_

He remembered.

*

He was afraid of her, captivated by her — by her steel and her ruthlessness, by how she had lost her humanity but not her grace. She commanded him. And he let her.

When she took him to bed, he did not understand. “What are you doing?“

“Taking back what’s mine,“ she told him, then kissed him — bit him, rent him in two, and he objected no longer.

It was not about pleasure, certainly not his but ostensibly not hers, either. She was atop him, using him as she liked, and it took and took and took, but eventually she found release. When she did, it was all he could do not to follow her.

She lifted herself off him, lay down at his side. He was still hard, and tried to think up a way of getting out of the room. He should have known she wouldn’t let him.

“Finish,” she told him, her breath still quick and shallow. He didn’t move. “And look at me when you do.“

His gaze found hers, and her eyes were dark and he was weak. He took himself in hand, stroking slowly at first, then faster, aided by her wetness, and he was still staring at her when the edge took him over, toppling him into a dark abyss of his own making. He remembered her perfume.

“Good,” she said, and this was the only praise he would ever receive from her lips. “Now go.”

*

The next day, he joined her in her office. The Hound Pits were run-down and the view as bleak as only the Wrenhaven at low tide could be. There were others, living here, aside from the handful of Whalers Daud had been allowed to keep: a former Admiral, a reluctant Overseer with a past found in roadside ambushes, and a noble sunk so low his memories, insignificant and dull, were riches. Havelock, Martin, and the youngest Pendleton fancied themselves a conspiracy, and loyalists besides, but Daud knew that their puffed out chests were a charade; for in the night their dreams were haunted by the same Void, by the same dark eyes.

“Go get Corvo,” she said when he’d reached her, and with those words dread settled into his chest, heavier than he’d known it could be. Heavier than what was there already, every day and certainly the night, holding him by the throat and whispering in his ear that his life was forfeit.

When he left the room, to put in motion the plan they had devised just for this purpose, his eyes strayed towards the bed. It betrayed none of its secrets.

Neither did the unbent line of the Empress’ back.

*

“Don’t kill me yet,” he growled when they hauled Attano from his cell. “Listen, first.” But he knew that, when he died, it would not be Corvo who swung the sword. His end would come at the flick of a dainty wrist, blood dripping away as her fingers curled into the throbbing muscle of his heart and stilled it. His days were numbered, and the rest was Void.

*

Corvo’s eyes sparked, for the first in months, only to go out again when he saw what she’d become.

“Jess!” he cried, his voice tearing in his throat like paper. Daud looked at the ground. The spectre of their intimacy, their impossible knowledge of one another as human beings who loved and loathed and brought life into world, was not for him to know.

“Corvo.”

Daud imagined she used to say his name very differently.

“What have you done with her?“

Corvo’s despair was marked by teeth, bared, his lips curled in a snarl. Daud saw Lurk reaching for the bodyguard, to hold him back, but he shakes his head. The Empress would not take kindly to anyone but her laying a finger on her precious crow, now that she had him back; even if she was without a heart to love him, to take joy in his return.

Perhaps the child would, at least.

*

“What does she want?“ Corvo asked Daud when they were alone, save for Piero, who was feverishly adjusting measurements of Corvo’s face and not listening to a word they were saying.

“She wants her daughter back,” was all Daud said in response.

“Her daughter?“ Corvo’s eyes were filled with doubt.

“Her heir, then,” Daud conceded. Daud knew that it would be their task to fetch the girl. But not yet. Her rescue would be something dangled before both him and Attano, to absolve one and heal the other; but first, there would be another kind of work to do.

*

That night, Daud found himself in the Void — and not only him.

“No,” he barely had time to say, before the Outsider’s dreaded Mark appeared on the back of Attano’s hand. “You black-eyed bastard,“ he bit out through gritted teeth, and barely felt it when Corvo dragged himself through the Void beside him.

_Won’t it make things easier?_ the Outsider turned eyes that had long mislaid their innocence on him.

“No, it won’t.” Without another word, Daud set off after the other man. He would be impossible to control, now. He found him in a similar spot — never the same, but the Void knew how to arrange itself — as he’d stood not long ago.

“It’s here,” Attano breathed, and clenched his fist, and Daud barely thought before reaching out and digging gloved fingers into his elbow.

“ _Don’t._ ”

_You can’t reach it,_ the Outsider said as he found them. _And don’t worry. He’s tried._

Attano turned to look at Daud, his gaze feral and strange.

“You can’t reach it,” Daud repeated those hated words. The Void dragged him back by his heels every time, even as he vowed and roared that he would save the girl himself.

If only her mother’s ghost were laid to rest.

*

“Leave us,” the Empress said to Corvo the night before they were due in Holger Square. “Daud, stay.” As an afterthought: “Take off your coat.”

It was late. There was no doubt as to what she wanted. Daud evaded Attano’s gaze as he undid the belt at his waist.

Corvo left the room, conjuring a storm by his steps alone.

*

The High Overseer fell a heretic. Corvo, behind his mask, was silent.

*

“Mother!” a young voice called.

“My girl,” her mother answered. “My little Princess.”

A frown. “You never liked it when people called me that.”

A hand stroked the young girl’s hair. “All things end, Emily. As they must.”

**Author's Note:**

> ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ


End file.
